


baking up a storm

by lucylikestowrite



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, Crack, F/F, Fluff, It's Ridiculous, Trapped In Elevator, the elevator is the great british bake off but it's the same kinda thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-15 07:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9224912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: Emma blinked. One second she had been in Storybrooke, in Regina’s office, and now she was standing in… Some sort of pastel explosion.She looked to her left. Across an aisle was Regina, who mouthed, “What the fuck?” At her.Emma shrugged, before realising that Regina was wearing an apron that she hadn't been wearing before. Looking down, she realised that she too was wearing one.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timetravelmagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetravelmagic/gifts).



> This is for Zohra's birthday. For years I've been promising her some sort of British Reality TV/American TV crossover for her birthday, and I finally wrote one. This isn't exactly what I was planning when I tweeted about this back in like October, but it's close enough. It's the second most ridiculous thing I've ever written, and I hope you enjoy it. Happy 19th <3

Emma blinked. One second she had been in Storybrooke, in Regina’s office, and now she was standing in… Some sort of pastel explosion.

She looked to her left. Across an aisle was Regina, who mouthed, “What the fuck?” At her.

Emma shrugged, before realising that Regina was wearing an apron that she hadn't been wearing before. Looking down, she realised that she too was wearing one.

She glanced around the room, assessing her surroundings. Everything was some shade of pastel. They appeared to be in a tent, because the wall near to her was not in fact a wall but tarpaulin. Arranged in two sets of 6, the tent was full of work benches. Behind each bench was a person, none of whom Emma recognised except Regina.

She was about to cross the aisle and speak to Regina when a horde of cameramen entered the room, camera’s perched on their shoulders. She jumped back, guiltily, behind her station.

She didn't know who would want to film her, but she didn't think it could be for any good reason.

Following the cameras came four other people: two middle aged women, an older woman, and an older man. They seemed vaguely familiar, but Emma couldn't figure out where from.

One of the younger women spoke. “Welcome, folks, to the Great British Bake Off!”

Emma looked over at Regina in horror. Were they in _Britain_? The only British person she knew was Gold, and Emma had no idea why he would do something like this.

The woman continued. “So you guys are the best of the best, but you still have to prove yourself! Of course, as always, it's cake week first. We love a bit of cake, don't we, Sue?”

‘Sue’ nodded. “That we do, Mel, that we do.”

‘Mel’ continued. “Now, we're going to do something a little bit different today. Paul and Mary would very much like you to make 24 cupcakes. Now they can be any flavour, but they must be iced and decorated.”

“Yes!” said Sue. “We're looking for even size, even colour, and of course - they have to be moist.”

“You have two hours in the clock! Ready!”

“Set!”

“Bake!” They said in unison.

Emma looked over at Regina, moving to the end of her bench. Regina matched her movement.

“What the hell are we doing here?” Emma hissed.

“Smile for the cameras, dear,” said Regina, jerking her head over her shoulder.

“I can't _smile_ , Regina. We've been magically transported to _Britain_ and they want us to _bake_. I don't know how to bake.”

“I think you'll find you do, Emma. Whoever sent us here was kind enough to give us the knowledge we need. I'm making apple and cinnamon cupcakes.”

Emma stared down at the ingredients in front of her, and suddenly a recipe formed in her head.

“Huh,” she said. “Looks like I'm making Rocky Road cakes.”

“Well, you never were that refined, were you?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, Emma.”

“Look, can't you just magic us out of here?” Emma asked

“You don't think I haven't already tried?” Regina lowered her hand out of sight of the other bakers and the cameras, holding her palm open. A fireball began to form, and then sputtered out, evaporating into what looked like…

“Is that icing sugar?”

Regina licked the residue left on her hand. “Yep. Someone’s having fun with us. I would think that the only way out of here would be to play the game.”

“And that means?”

“Bake, Emma.”

It seemed like Regina was right. There didn't seem any obvious way out of this, so she reluctantly starting weighing out her ingredients.

It had only been a few minutes before she looked up to see Mel and Sue making a beeline for her, a cameraman behind them.

“So! Emma! You're originally from America, yes?”

Emma murmured her assent.

“How long have you been over here?”

“Oh… A while. But it seems like just a couple of minutes!”

Mel and Sue laughed companionably.

“So what are you baking for us today?”

Emma was surprised again when she realised that she could talk in detail about what she was making, the words coming easily. The more she talked, the more it felt like whoever had put them there hadn't done it out of malice, because they didn't really seem to be making her suffer. This was disturbing, because it meant there was some other reason she was here, and she didn't know how she was going to figure that out _and_ bake.

Eventually Mel and Sue moved on, and Emma watched as they went to talk to Regina. Regina was looking far too poised for the situation. She was talking easily to these strangers, looking utterly relaxed in her purple sweater. As Emma watched, Regina put down her wooden spoon and leant on the counter to talk more intently to Mel and Sue, gesturing at her ingredients.

Emma sighed. She shouldn't be so beautiful right now, not stranded in a baking show. Meanwhile, Emma was pretty sure she had flour in her hair from when she used the KitchenAid too eagerly, and she could feel her face heating up the exertion (not that she was really doing much, but whatever morally ambiguous being had put her here, they didn't seem to have given her the motor skills for baking as well as the knowledge.)

She sighed, wiping her brow, and then snapped her fingers, hoping that maybe some of her magic would creep through. Unluckily, it didn't, and she was treated to the same cloud of icing sugar as Regina.

Accepting her fate, she went back to making her cakes manually.

 

Somehow, when the time was up, she had 24 vaguely presentable cupcakes in front of her. They weren't perfect, but they were all roughly the same size, and had almost the same decoration on each of them. One of them had been stuck together by icing after an unfortunate incident with a knife, but she'd hidden that one, and hopefully they wouldn't see.

Paul and Mary arrived by her bench, and looked down at her cakes.

“Emma!” Said Mary. “These actually look really good. You know, I wasn't sure about this recipe when you first told us about it, but they're turned out so well!”

“Well, you know, I tried my best.”

Paul rooted around in the cakes, of course finding the one broken in half. He held it up, and Emma watched in dismay as it fell apart. “So I suppose we have… 25 cakes here,” he said.

As Emma’s face fell, Sue said, “All the more for me to eat!” And grabbed it out of Paul’s hand.

“They're really very tasty, Emma. I'm very pleased,” said Mary, and then they were already moving on. Emma sat back down, relieved that for now, they weren’t focusing on her.

The group had moved across the aisle to Regina’s bench. She tried not to concentrate too much, because, even from a distance, Regina’s cakes were obviously perfect looking. Paul and Mary loved them with no caveats, obviously.

Emma must have been looking unusually displeased, because afterwards, Sue came over and whispered, “I liked yours better.”

After everyone’s bakes had been judged, (Emma couldn’t remember anyone other than Regina and her being judged. Were the other people even real? She couldn’t tell. She tried to recall any of their faces, but struggled.) a woman wearing a headset that Emma didn’t recognise came into tent. “Okay folks, time for your talking heads. Out we go.”

Emma had no idea what a talking head was, but it didn’t seem good. She widened her eyes at Regina as they were ushered outside.

It seemed like they had to take turns, and Regina and Emma ended up at the end of the queue. As they waited, Emma whispered to Regina, “We’re outside. Why don’t we just leave? What can stop us?”

Regina seemed unsure, but let Emma lead her away anyway. When they were almost out of sight of the tent, Mary suddenly appeared by them. She hadn’t crept up, just one moment she wasn’t there, and one moment she was.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why?” Emma asked.

Mary conjured up a packet of marshmallows. Emma wasn’t surprised any more. And then Mary threw a marshmallow in front of her, and it bounced back, perfectly toasted. This slightly surprised Emma.

“Well that’s some Hunger Games shit,” she remarked.

“I would advise you both that you won’t be able to leave until you realise why you’re here, and do something about it,” Mary said, (although Emma was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t really Mary, that none of them were really who they appeared to be) and then disappeared in a puff of icing sugar.

Emma coughed. “I’m getting kinda sick of icing sugar.”

Regina wasn’t really listening, staring at the barrier, only just visible if you looked carefully, hands on her hips.

“Why do you think we’re here?”

Emma shrugged. “No idea. I don’t have much experience with baking dimensions, or whatever the hell this place is.”

Sighing, Regina said, “Well, I suppose we should get back to do our speaking faces, or whatever it is.”

She strode off, leaving Emma to watch her leave. Emma sighed, and she gazed at Regina’s retreating figure, she began to have an idea of why she was there.

 

Unaccustomed to speaking into a camera, Emma blurted out something about her cakes, and after the producer failed to coax anything more eloquent from her, she was ushered back into the tent.

Regina was already back inside, and, when Emma asked how her interview had gone, she was unsurprised that it had gone ‘very well, Emma. I’m used to cameras, you know.’ Emma didn’t know why she would have expected anything else.

The next challenge was the technical, and for a second Emma was worried, because she didn’t appear to have anything in her head to help her get through this, just a vague sense of dread, and then she looked around and saw faces that were equally terrified.

“Okay folks,” said Mel. “It’s time for the technical, so, Paul, Mary, if you’d like to leave us now?”

When they had left, Mel continued. “Today, Paul and Mary just want you to make us a Victoria Sponge. They’ve given you a variety of ingredients, and some instructions, which are extremely helpful. You have an hour and a half.”

“Ready!”

“Set!”

“Bake!”

Emma picked up the instructions. They simply read ‘Bake a Victoria Sponge.’

That was it. Despite the fact that she could feel a recipe floating up to the forefront of her mind, she disregarded that, and strode over to Regina’s bench.

“What are you doing, Emma?” Regina whispered. “We’re supposed to be baking.”

“I don’t care. You’re coming with me.”

“We can’t go! We’ve got a time limit! We have to make the cakes!”

Emma grabbed Regina by the arm. “But do we really? Look around, Regina. Are we really here?”

They both looked at the tent, and its contents. It was there, but… not really. There was a dreamlike quality to the room, and the more you noticed that, the more obvious it became.

Emma pulled Regina outside.

“You asked me why I thought we were here. Do you really have no idea why someone would put us here?”  
“No, Emma. That’s why I asked you.”

Emma sighed. “Well, here’s hoping only one of us has to figure it out because,” she said, looking around. “It kinda looks like this place can’t sustain us much longer.”

“What have you figured out, Emma?”

“It wants me to do this,” said Emma, kissing Regina.

Regina started at first, but then relaxed, her eyes closing. If they had opened their eyes right at that moment, they would’ve seen the reality around them collapsing, folding in on itself, but they didn’t.

When they eventually did, they were standing back in Regina’s office. There was a knock on the door.

They sprang apart, guiltily. Snow came through the door. “Am I disturbing something?”

“Nope,” said Emma, at the same time that Regina said, “Yes, actually.”

They looked at each other. Regina spoke again. “We were actually just about to start a very important meeting. It can’t wait.”

“Right…” said Snow, backing slowly out.

“What couldn’t wait for me to speak to my mom?”

“Nothing really. But you still have icing sugar on your face,” Regina said, moving to wipe it off, before kissing her, hands threading through Emma’s hair.

“So you want to talk about all that?” Emma asked.

Regina laughed. “Are you even sure it happened?”

The more Emma thought about it, she more she wasn’t.

 

That evening, back at Regina’s house, Emma couldn’t remember why she wanted to bake something, but she knew that she wanted Regina by her side when she did it.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i'm aware americans call icing sugar powdered sugar but i will call it powdered sugar when i'm DEAD


End file.
